Expert reviews and ratings

It's the same old story. AMD's latest chips are great value for certain tasks but less so for others. You get masses of multi-thread performance, but single-thread and gaming performance trails Intel's rival processors a...

Review: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 – The Awesome Work BuddyOnce upon a time, a processor that uses software to engage all cores and max out its performance is far-fetched at best; that all changes with the all-new AMD Ryzen 7 2700. Now, let's recall one important...

AMD's first-generation "non-X" Ryzen processors were universally hailed as budget champions. That changes with the company's 2000-series CPUs, though. Its Ryzen 7 2700 is only $30 cheaper than the 2700X. Given a choice between them, we'd rather have the flagship's great performance and capable bundled cooler for a few dollars more.

Is there any reason to buy an Intel CPU now that the AMD Ryzen 2700 and 2600 are out? Or even reason to get the X variants (2700X & 2600X)? Lets benchmark them and find out! Want one? Amazon 2700: prourls.co/5u0q Amazon 2600: prourls.co/0gwh Products...

For the desktop PC gamer, the higher TDP X models are still the go-to for gaming and general performance though. They’re a little faster, and a little more expensive, but you get what you pay for. However, if heat and power are a big concern to you, and they are for a lot of people, these perform pretty darn close for less money, with a lot lower heat and power usage that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Ultimately, the only real contender is AMD's own Ryzen 7 2700X, which if our samples are anything to go by, might overclock further and offers much better stock speed performance and a better cooler. It's otherwise a great CPU for the cash, especially if you want to build a low-power system or one that's limited to low-profile coolers with eight cores - more than you can get with Intel at this TDP, where those cores are also locked in terms of speed.

Overall, there's no huge reason to recommend the Ryzen 7 2700 over the 2700X other than energy efficiency, and we recommend not choosing this chip in pursuit of a $30 saving if what you want is nearly the same out-of-the-box performance. The 2700X is faster, has a better cooler, and is the overall better product. If you're purely into gaming, then Intel's 8th generation Core processor family is still ahead in gaming performance, and the i7-8700 looks like the better choice at this price. Even the $70 cheaper Ryzen 5 2600X offers better value.

Overall Zen+ is a good step forward with what pretty much is a bit of a die-shrink and tweaking. Ryzen has evolved and matured, it all adds up to lower latency, better memory support, faster base clock, higher turbo bins, the accumulation of it all is...

The answer is that, in our mind, it's worth going for these 65W models if using a smaller-form-factor PC with limited airflow. That, or if you really want to run a quiet PC that still has decent performance. As enthusiasts, we'd naturally gravitate towards the X-designated parts for guaranteed performance, but the non-Xs remain solid choices, even if the value argument isn't as strong as first-generation models.

The Ryzen 7 2700 started off with the same type of performance that we had seen from the Ryzen 5 2600. The pricing is the same £30 behind its X rated cousin, and at stock there was a similar drop off in the scores we were seeing from our benchmarks. It's safe to say that we were slightly disheartened by this turn of events knowing we had hours of testing ahead of us that didn't look like causing any major surprises.